


Détente

by Vulgarweed



Series: When In Rome [2]
Category: Good Omens - Gaiman & Pratchett
Genre: Ancient Rome, Bath Sex, Historical, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-31
Updated: 2010-03-31
Packaged: 2017-10-08 13:19:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/76050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vulgarweed/pseuds/Vulgarweed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sequel to "Compromising Positions." Apparently for the angel-in-residence there circa 40 AD, "do as the Romans do" involved rather publicly and noisily giving an Agent of the Adversary the shagging of his existence, while one was wearing entirely too much costume jewelry and purple drapery and the other was wearing mostly body oil, a slave collar, and a smile. It was possibly the only truly shocking thing to happen in Rome in the past three years that really couldn't be blamed on Caligula. As we look in on our heroes again, we see that Aziraphale has not yet fully recovered from his self-inflicted Saturnalia trauma. Crowley, obviously, cannot be counted on to help his repentance. Illustrated by Quantum_Witch</p>
            </blockquote>





	Détente

Aziraphale’s hands started shaking again as he catalogued his new acquisitions from Egypt. For all that he’d thought his nasty bout of shock at himself at just how effectively he’d Misruled the previous week had mostly dissipated, from time to time the reality of it still crashed down on his head like one of those shoddy tenements.

It wasn’t that he’d got drunk. That was perfectly normal. Nor was it that he’d participated in a pagan festival; that was acceptable as per the blending-in clause provided one isn’t sincere about it. It wasn’t that he’d been in a brothel. One might well do that sort of thing, for the edification of souls in need, and it wasn’t as if Himself had been prissy about associating with certain professionals when He was here in human flesh; cast the first stone and all that.

Come to think of it, it probably wasn’t even really that he had…

(Oh, stop being such a fussy old prude, he told himself. Think it, go on: _had sex._ Oh yes. Yes you did.)

After all, human bodies and instincts were prone to such things, and if he were to truly understand people, perhaps he occasionally even ought to try…and it certainly wasn’t as if he’d _corrupted_ anyone.

(No, the problem is…oh, say it to yourself. Had sex. With a _demon.)_

Even that was not the core of the blistering existential shudder. It was that he…

(One more time, you can do it: Had sex….)

With _Crowley._

_That_ was the problem.

Some of the papyri he was looking at had content he wasn’t expecting. There was Roman influence in the artwork, and in this picture of Cleopatra, naked on a bed with her asp wrapped around her, she seemed to be enjoying herself quite a bit more than one would expect of a suicide.

“It wasn’t me,” said a voice behind him. “I’m not poisonous.”

Aziraphale shrieked. Crowley laid a hand on his shoulder.

“Jumpy, aren’t we?”

“You sneaked up on me!”

“I did not. You were just very absorbed.”

Aziraphale started to count to ten in his mind and then interrupted himself.

“So—how’s the sedition going?”

“Well, I’m still here,” Crowley said, “So that’s good.”

“So’s the Emperor.”

“Yes, well…wheels are turning. You know I’m actually kind of fond of him.”

“Well…” Aziraphale finally said. “I’m glad you’re all right then.”

“That’s decent of you,” Crowley said. “I’m glad too. So glad I’ve come to remind you that you gave me an IOU for a Saturnalia present. After all, I did give you that lovely candle...”

Aziraphale’s face attempted to blanch and blush at the same time, but because this is impossible, his skin just tingled in a confused manner. “And…you want to…”

“Mm-hmm.”

***

And this was what Aziraphale remembered when he walked up the hill to Crowley’s house that night. As counterparted agents in clandestine negotiations are wont to do, they had haggled and bargained and set terms. They had veiled and unveiled, hinted and suggested, revealed desires and then hid them away again, implicitly agreeing to pretend the stakes were not really very high.

“Just this, though,” Crowley’d said. “No bloody awkwardness. None of that will-he-or-won’t-he. Humans do that all the time and it drives me barking mad. If you show up, it means you know what you want, all right?”

There was something reassuring about this, and Aziraphale had decided he wasn’t going to show up. He neglected to inform his legs of this, however (or, indeed, any parts between) and so found himself walking through Crowley’s elegant door as evening deepened--knowing what he wanted, of course, more or less.

_More._ Of _that._ The shuddering grind of Crowley against him, the sounds he’d made when Aziraphale _did things_ to him…For once this line of thinking was not deeply inappropriate.

He’d been to Crowley’s place before, and he was pretty darned sure _that_ hadn’t been there: A tiled bath big enough for a sweaty and bloody army, but containing only one grinning demon, up to his shoulders in steaming water, leaning against the side of the pool and dipping his hand in a plate of…were those grapes _peeled?_ He’d surely done it with an eyeblink, the cheater. And Aziraphale was starting to suspect that as much of a fashion victim as he’d always been, Crowley’s mind was also a nearly infinite repository of excuses to be naked. He’d probably got off on shedding his skin in front of other snakes.

“You knew I’d come, didn’t you?” he said, resigned.

“I knew you’d _arrive,”_ said Crowley with a leer. “You haven’t come yet, but you will.”

Aziraphale decided he was going to get all the blushing over with now. He’d underestimated how much of it that was going to take. Crowley was sipping wine and watching him so intently he looked for all the world like someone with a lot of money riding on something competitive and bloody at the arena.

“Take off your clothes,” Crowley finally said. “I never got to really see you.”

“I…er…” Aziraphale was halfway into being mortified as he tangled with his toga ungracefully, and then decided he simply wouldn’t be. It was an unremarkable body, but it was his and he lived in it, and if Crowley wanted to see it…

When Aziraphale untied the belt over his tunic, Crowley’s tongue flickered over his lips.

Yes, this would be the worst part, he thought, unwrapping the little loincloth he had no doubt Crowley never wore – there was no hiding the way his body was responding to the demon’s lustful gaze and that sense of anticipation. But there was also no reason to hide it, and that was as exhilarating as it was frightening.

And there Crowley’s eyes hovered wantonly, of course, his smile growing wider. “Now I think _you’re_ rather eager.”

“Oh, and you’re not--?”

“Get _in,_ angel,” Crowley said in a voice gone raspy. And Aziraphale did, slowly, feet first, feeling the hot water tickle him and cradle him most intimately. He hardly had time to adjust to the heat of it before Crowley stalked upon him (leaving a slightly serpentine wake), pushing him slowly back to the far wall of the bath with hands in his hair and mouth on his neck and very palpable evidence of eagerness pressing against his belly.

Aziraphale shut his eyes tight, overwhelmed by smooth wet skin flowing around him and entangling him; those hands and that mouth exploring him…for that first time, that Saturnalia, it all rushed back – how desire had taken control of him and made him batter himself against Crowley so shamelessly, how the demon had responded, begging for more. He’d been compliant and giving then, and now he was _taking,_ and Aziraphale found himself wanting badly to be plundered, and it was dizzying.

Crowley bit his shoulder and rubbed his thigh between Aziraphale’s legs, the water making their movements heavy and slow, oddly graceful.

“Oh, you want this so much,” Crowley whispered, “I can _smell_ it.”

“Yes, yes, I - _oh!”_ Crowley’s fingernails, lightly scratching down his back, hands taking firm grasp of his arse and caressing roughly. His hands were making free of the demon’s skin too; he worked one in between them to watch Crowley’s face twist in pleasure as Aziraphale closed a hand around his cock, sliding the soft skin back and letting the hot water caress him in the wake of his fondling fingers. “Now I see why they…it’s _insane,_ it’s so…very…nice…”

“Nice?”

“No, the word is…_ohhh!”_ The word was a strangled moan as Crowley bent his body backwards until his pale hair touched the water, adept tongue maddeningly circling a nipple. Yes, that was the word.

Crowley’s hand was returning the favours. He lifted his head from Aziraphale’s chest, yellow eyes burning widely. “Tragic…” the demon chided. “All this time, and you’ve never had this sssssucked.”

Aziraphale gasped. Crowley submerged.

The water was hot and wet, and Crowley’s mouth was more so, slick and clinging and molding itself to the shape of his flesh, and Aziraphale pulled his hair (floating, rising, like seaweed), and banged the back of his head once on the edge of the bath, and tried to restrain himself from thrusting helplessly. Crowley’s hands slid up the back of his thighs, nudged his legs apart, coaxed one knee up onto his shoulder as he worked.

He didn’t need to breathe, after all.

Crowley’s head was a dark spot under the water, moving just barely too slowly on purpose. Aziraphale couldn’t see the demon’s hands at all but _oh_ he could feel them, doing wicked things between his thighs to sensitive parts, lifted and floating in the water and his palm, a fingertip gone exploring somewhere rarely spread so open, never touched before at all, and then oh _fu-_ Something, a little invasion, careful but demanding. Crowley’s fingertip pushed harder, and each infinitesimal bit of yielding _mattered so much_ and then his throat did something…

Aziraphale’s building white star of pressure went supernova and stayed there while the world stopped.

Crowley swallowed. He came up quickly, splashing and shaking his wet hair and shoving his tongue roughly into Aziraphale’s mouth, full of a slightly salty, oceanic taste with a little bit of musk and flesh in it as well, and Aziraphale just made soft sounds against his mouth; quieter, shivery versions of the ones just wrenched out of him. His body felt boneless and floating. One leg was wrapped lazily around Crowley, and his arms tightened around his back as he took and returned the kiss.

“Tasted good,” Crowley whispered.

“Er…thanks…I…”

Hot whisper in his ear, “You know…I need…”

“Anything, anything…”

“I want…” Crowley gave a dramatic pause, a good chance for another neck-bite, not hard, but lingering. “…you to tell me something you want.”

“That’s…not fair, I can’t think,”

“I don’t want you to think.”

Wanting something? Too much to ask of him now.

He did want, and Crowley knew it, the bastard, and…oh, did he? Aziraphale’s body was still burning and longing, he hadn’t gone soft, he didn’t feel sleepy or shaky or any of those things he thought he might; he caught himself whispering to Crowley, “I want you to…do to me what I did to you that night. I want to feel,” and here he gave Crowley’s erection a soft sliding tease, “this, _in_ me, I want you to…”

“You want me to fuck you,” Crowley reiterated salaciously.

Aziraphale was far beyond flinching. “Yes, I do. Very much. I mean, if you want to…”

Crowley just growled and slid his hands around Aziraphale’s rear, lifting him. The water buoyed him up nicely, and Aziraphale thought Crowley’s body felt so good in the embrace of his legs fitted high around his waist; lean and supple, almost a little delicate but muscled like a…well, that was obvious. The hands stroking him and then the adventurous fingers teasing him, urging him to…

Well, he was very relaxed. And there was an art to it, something to do with trance and breathing and surrender, and he thought of how Crowley’s body had come to welcome him, and he moaned eagerly, spreading wantonly wide and making Crowley gasp with the heat of it. Oh – He- Somewhere, it felt _big_ and it almost hurt but it wasn’t pain exactly, it was a sensation he had no word for, so he stopped thinking in words altogether.

“Howzzat feel?” Crowley panted, leaning into him just a little, and Aziraphale nodded.

“Good. I think.”

“I’ll ssstop if you hate it,” Crowley murmured, obviously hoping with his whole being that wouldn’t happen.

It didn’t. Crowley moved cautiously, and Aziraphale moved back, and reality slipped back into place but in a very different place than it had been before.

It was like shooting desire directly into a vein, if such drug practices had existed yet.

It was like parting skin and bone painlessly and letting the moon shine directly on one’s heart.

It was like – well, it wasn’t like anything except Crowley moving with so much more confidence now and stroking a spot inside that positively burst with pleasure each time. It was watching his handsome face twist and shiver and his eyes close as his hands braced against the wall of the bath on either side of Aziraphale’s head, and water sloshed rhythmically up all around them and the sounds they made achieved a strange harmony. Somewhere in the middle of it Aziraphale thought he might come again before Crowley did once, and that would be kind of embarrassing.

“Ssssso good, I can’t, I’ve never –“ moaned Crowley.

“So good, can’t believe it,” moaned Aziraphale. “Like you were _made_ to fit me…”

“That’sss – a – oooohh –bloody sstrange thing to sssay.”

“Sorry…” Aziraphale wasn’t but he tightened his arms around Crowley’s neck (it would have killed a human), his body bent sharply, and felt that rising tension, that gathering for takeoff that was getting so familiar…

Except it wasn’t his own encroaching climax he felt, it was Crowley’s; thrusts of sudden and painless violence; a stiffening and shuddering and an animal sound, his head thrown back for a frozen moment before he bent low and bit Aziraphale again, marking him this time—perhaps that was the cue the angel’s body wanted, for that looming edge of his own was suddenly very brightly, blindingly there.

As he shivered and cried out, he felt a sudden hard, huge shove at his back, and something was pushing him into Crowley and pushing Crowley backwards and below the surface. The weight that pressed down on him suddenly increased and held them down, still entwined, Crowley under him on the warm tile floor of the bath. He didn’t need to breathe, but he had been gasping for air, and now he was coughing underwater. Crowley was convulsing beneath him with laughter.

Aziraphale tried to see to the surface and found his vision blocked with whiteness.

Crowley wriggled out from under him and pulled him back up. With superhuman strength – he was, after all – he managed to haul Aziraphale over the edge of the bath and up on relatively dry land, still laughing.

Wings are _heavy_ when they’re wet.

Aziraphale would have found them better to hide his face under if they weren’t completely sodden.

Crowley knelt beside him with a sigh and gently spread the wings out as best as he could around them to help the drenched feathers dry. The electric hair dryer would not be invented for nearly another two millennia, but he improvised the effect as best he could with his optional lungs.

“A different sort of ‘blow job,’” he chuckled.

“Don’t _laugh_ at me,” Aziraphale snapped. But in truth, considering all the other things he really ought to be embarrassed about, he was grateful for this one.

“I’m not,” Crowley lied. “That good, huh?”

“Honestly, yes.”

“Mm. I thought so too,” said Crowley, placing a sudden kiss on Aziraphale’s back between the roots of his wings.

It probably would not be wise to make a habit of this, Aziraphale thought. There is diplomacy, and there is fraternising, and then there’s…

“Grapes?” said Crowley.

“Mm, yes please.”

There’s détente.

  
~fin~


End file.
